THE COLLECTED STORIESHeinrich Böll
DogmaLars Iyer
Many of us have spent more time reading about Kingsely Amis’ reputation as a high-minded philandering boozehound than we have reading his books. Of his estimable output, this reader must confess to only ever reading Lucky Jim. Consider this year’s birthday an opportunity for rediscovery. But…
David Rees, the world’s best and only artisanal pencil sharpener, came to Brooklyn on Monday, and gave the audience at Pete’s Candy Store an hour-long demonstration on the many techniques involved in sharpening #2 pencils. The audience didn’t know what to make of Rees at first,…
At the time of writing, a Battle of Ideas is being fought at London’s totally dreamy Free Word Centre. The question: ‘Is it ever valid to judge literature with reference to its nationality, linguistic distinctions aside?’ The event’s blurb doesn’t pull any punches: ‘Are we…
Here’s an idea whose time has definitely come. Via Shelf Awareness, we found out yesterday that Word bookstore in Brooklyn is starting a new reading series next month that’s sure to be a hoot: literary karaoke. The first literary karaoke has been dubbed “Greatest Hits…
How do you take a 265,000-word novel and condense it into manageably sized, 140-character chunks? That’s the question one man seeks to answer this Thursday, June 16th, or Bloomsday, the 24-hour time period that frames James Joyce’s tome Ulysses. Stephen, the project’s founder (who has…
In an article over at the Millions, Kevin Hartnett has interviewed students from the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. These graduates are significant because they were present at what has become a cultural event in its own right: the commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace titled This is…
Fledgling press Calypso Editions is publishing Building the Barricade and Other Poems, a new translation of Anna Swir‘s breathtaking poems about the Warsaw Uprising in which hundreds of thousands of Polish resistance fighters and civilians died fighting the Nazis. Each short, perfect poem focuses on its topic–a…
UK science fiction author Stephen Hunt is proud to call himself a ‘genre’ author. Since the launch of World Book Night last month, he has spearheaded a campaign heavily criticising WBN and the BBC for the lack of inclusion of more commercial fiction in the…
To the rest of the world, Tahrir Square has become more than simply a place symbolic of and synonymous with the recent revolution. I personally can’t even say the word “Egypt” without thinking about Tahrir Square, which is perhaps as it should be. It was…
As the official British correspondent for MobyLives, this weekend I attended the wonderful launch of World Book Night to report back to our readers on the festivities. The opening ceremony took place on Friday 4th March in Trafalgar Square, with a line-up of authors including…